The Holocaust

Theoretical Readings

Description - The Holocaust by Neil Levi

This anthology addresses the relationship between the events of the Nazi genocide and the intellectual concerns of contemporary literary and cultural theory in one volume. It collects together both classic and new theoretical writings. Wide in its thematic scope, it covers questions to do with: authenticity and experience; memory and trauma; historiography and the philosophy of history; fascism and Nazi antisemitism; representation and identity formation; race, gender and genocide; and the implications of the Holocaust for theories of the unconscious, ethics, politics and aesthetics. The readings, which are fully contextualized by a general introduction, section introductions and bibliographical notes, represent the work of many influental writers and theorists among them: Primo Levi; Giorgio Agamben; Hannah Arendt; Cathy Caruth; Saul Friedlander; Emmanuel Levinas; Jean-Francois Lyotard; and Theodor Adorno.

Author Biography - Neil Levi

Neil Levi is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Drew University and Sesqui Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of English, Art History, Film and Media at the University of Sydney. He is the author of articles on twentieth-century literature, culture and theory. Michael Rothberg is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation and numerous articles on twentieth-century literature and theory.